


It Comes and Goes

by flyingisland



Category: Durarara!!
Genre: Drabbles, M/M, Shizaya - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-22
Updated: 2016-08-12
Packaged: 2018-06-03 18:24:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 13
Words: 8,684
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6621409
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/flyingisland/pseuds/flyingisland
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>In a thousand different worlds, through a thousand different means, two lives are still connected through the strings of fate.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Death

A legend dies.

Not in a flash of explosions, or in the deep trenches of war. Not in fiery infamy. An urban legend slinks quietly into the shadows of the night, tucking itself away in the dark corner of an alleyway, bleeding out with blurry eyes and too much alcohol in its system to know where home is.

No one is around when a trembling hand collects organs that surely aren’t supposed to be pouring out from deep abdominal lacerations. The other finds a crumpled pack of cigarettes, a lighter, and the last will to move and light it between his lips.

Heiwajima Shizuo has survived gunshots, hit-and-runs, knife wounds, and assassins. Heiwajima Shizuo has dragged himself through the struggles of growing up a monster.

And Heiwajima Shizuo dies alone, shedding the skin of his old sins, reaching forward into the brightest light he has ever witnessed in twenty-eight years of torturous living.

Celty will be sad, Akane will not understand. Tom-san will need to find a new employee.

He wonders if there’s any food left in his fridge to spoil.

He wonders if going through death alone is selfish. If maybe he should text out one last goodbye.

His phone is shattered some ways away, bloodstained and useless. He’s a mess of broken limbs and torn muscle, of sweat and booze-stained breath.

His eyes drag themselves up into the openness of the night sky, drinking in the outlines of stars. He counts them slowly, looking for constellations, looking for heaven hiding away somewhere in the clouds.

And gradually, he fades away.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I realized that I really had no system for saving my drabbles on tumblr! It was a sad realization, because I really do have a soft spot in my heart for some of them, so I figured that I would sort of... store them here. And also share them with everyone who doesn't follow me on tumblr, because hey, maybe someone here will enjoy them too!
> 
> They're not all sad! I absolutely promise!


	2. Hot Pot

It’s a sunny afternoon.

Shizuo fumbles with the plates in his cabinets, searching for the remaining two that he knows aren’t cracked. His fan is humming gently, warm air circulating throughout the room and brushing his hair into his eyes each time he makes to turn around. Traffic blares in through open windows. His air conditioner is broken for the fifth time this summer, and he isn’t willing to call his landlord about it just yet.

Talking to other people is not one of his strong suits.

The television is turned down low, but he can still make out the murmuring of words below each of the other noises. There’s a headache sitting comfortably on his couch, singing a childish tune as he flips through the channels.

And on the counter, so out of season, they’re preparing hot pot.

“You should call Celty,” Izaya calls, faux-laziness lacing his tone.

For some reason, the louse is a lot more excited about this than he should be.

The food is almost finished as he tells the flea that Celty and Shinra aren’t answering their phones today. The perverted doctor had taken a certain care in informing him that they’d be unavailable. He thinks about calling Tom-san, if only to bring some company over, but he’s not dumb enough that he hasn’t sensed the strange contempt that Izaya holds for his senpai.

 _“You love that boss of yours a lot, don’t you, Shizu-chan?”_ the bastard had crooned one evening, many moons ago, _“Should I be worried?”_

So that idea is scrapped immediately, but Izaya remains unconvinced no matter how many times he tries to tell him that he doesn’t have that many friends.

At least, that many who would be willing to join him and the informant for a meal.

In the end, they find themselves tucked together on the couch, watching some children’s show that Izaya has so kindly selected before hiding the remote. The food is a little too salty. It’s far too hot to be eating something like this while his room fills with the stuffy air of the city outside, but when he looks to his left, Izaya is eating quietly.

The smallest of smiles sneaks its way onto the informant’s lips.

He doesn’t understand it at all, but Izaya is happy.

And maybe that’s enough.


	3. Hate You, Love You

Izaya shows up at 2AM with a convenience store bag in his hands.

There are a lot of words between them, but neither of them speak. There are tired red lines under Shizuo’s eyes, a shameful puffiness against his skin and a thickness in his throat that strangles every breath he takes. Izaya mentions none of this.

He steps to the side to let Izaya in, groggy but sleepless, hungry and dissatisfied. He’d thought maybe—

He thought someone else might have been ringing the bell. He hadn’t been entirely thrilled to find those dark eyes smiling up at him instead of icy blue. Izaya’s hair is too short, too black, too fuzzy and straight, and his arms are spindly, bony things. No good for holding. No good for anything but pulling himself over fences and alley walls during their chases. They can’t encircle him as gently as he needs. They can’t wipe away the painful twinging so deep within his chest.

“So she broke up with you?” Izaya asks finally, setting the bag between a dozen empty beer cans and old cigarette butts on the coffee table, “Or did she just leave?”

She just left, but he says nothing. Izaya knows the answer anyway.

“Well, you know I—“

“I know.”

Izaya looks as though he’s biting back words. He looks as though he’s holding back an outburst— _‘I told you so, I told you so, I told you so’_ —

You should have stayed with me instead.

There isn’t enough air in the world for how much he wants to scream. There isn’t enough concrete in the city to break.

And so, instead, he allows Izaya to take him in his arms. He allows himself to be kissed until he’s thinking of nothing but the roughness of those cold hands in his hair.

“I don’t love you,” he breathes, and there’s a strange glassiness that settles in the blackness of Izaya’s eyes.

“I know.”

It doesn’t matter anyway. Izaya is a masochist, through and through.

They fuck, they sleep, and Izaya is still lounging in his bed when he wakes up the next morning.

He doesn’t kiss him goodbye. He doesn’t wake him up.

Izaya will be back again tonight.

He always is.


	4. Nocturnal

From the moment he laid eyes on the monster, a strange fire inched its way through his veins.

Fifteen, learning to watch disasters unfold from the cold safety of the shadows, Orihara Izaya suddenly found himself thrust unprepared into the hot vulnerability of the light. A beast with unspeakable strength threw punches that shattered concrete, pumped spindly legs against the streets with fingers nearly brushing the untouched fabric of Izaya’s jacket. Mere centimeters away, the brute had almost caught him, and Izaya had found that morning, an unfamiliar sort of hatred crawling like the legs of so many roaches along the inside of his skin—

That he might have just discovered an unlovable human. 

Maybe not a human, maybe more of an entity; a rabid dog, a specter laying low beneath the beds of children, reaching its claws up and grasping exposed feet. The beast had definitely squirreled his way into Izaya’s nightmares, and so it wasn’t completely unrealistic to imagine that a few kids might have witnessed that horrible strength and found themselves scarred by it as well.

But the very first night, weeks after their first encounter, after so many failed attempts at the protozoan’s life, he’d had a different sort of dream…

And Izaya wasn’t prepared for that either.

Writhing under heavy blankets, but shivering with only the thin veil of sheets, sweat had beaded at his brow and stained the fabric tangled along his legs. He’d awoken in a fever, gasping out the indecipherable syllables of a forbidden name. His heart beat rapid rhythms against his ribcage. Through the fog, he’d found his fingers working the needy ache between his thighs.

Blond hair, chocolate eyes, a mouth that never smiled. An angry curse in a low, rumbling voice—something deep and meaningful that he couldn’t remember if he tried. The monster had caught him, had touched him everywhere that he’d never let himself think about before.

And Izaya had touched himself in those places for the very first time.

A week of this torture later, he’d approached Shinra in the courtyard after school. He hadn’t went to class, of course, for fear of crossing paths with the Heiwajima Monster, but he’d waited patiently by the front gates until the glint of sunlight against familiar glasses had caught his eye in the center of the crowd.

Shinra greeted him, not bothering to question his absence. He’d never approved of anything Izaya did, so why start lecturing him then?

“I think I’m sick,” Izaya had greeted in return, skipping the formalities in favor of the pressing matter that he’d been working himself up to confessing all day.

Shinra made a comment similar to, _“Obviously”_ and he ignored it.

They walked the sidewalk, weaving in and out of throngs of students as they made the trip toward Shinra’s apartment. His dad was never there. The headless mistress who haunted his home surely wouldn’t understand Izaya’s predicament enough to judge him.

They’d toed the threshold of the entryway, slipping off their shoes and moving through the door. Shinra didn’t seem particularly interested in Izaya’s situation, really, but that was no surprise. Convincing him that anything unrelated to his unrequited obsession was worth his time would be more of a challenge than figuring out his confusing illness alone.

“So what’s wrong?” Shinra questioned, eyeing him over the rim of his glasses. The woman was gone. He wasn’t sure where she could have went without drawing attention to herself, but it wasn’t worth delving into another Celty-related rant.

“I’ve been having… dreams,” He admitted, sitting quietly on the couch and fiddling with the edge of his sleeve, “I wake up every night in a fever. My entire body is hot and I can’t concentrate on anything else. I think I might be coming down with something.”

Shinra, stupid, insufferable Shinra, set his bag down on the floor. He padded through the room into the kitchen, fetching a glass from the cabinet and filling it in the sink. Quiet for the longest time, he drank his water. He made his way back into the room. After an extended stare shared between the both of them, he laughed.

“Oh, you’re serious?” he questioned, voice high with an amusement that rattled nothing but pure annoyance up Izaya’s spine, “Has no one ever had _The Talk_ with you?”

Incredulously, Izaya refused to break their gaze. His parents were never around. The library didn’t supply such books. Why would it matter anyway? He was sick: dreaming of a disgusting monster and feeling heat surging along his skin! None of that had anything to do with sex. It was a sickness. It was an illness that could only be cured with some sort of pill. And for whatever reason, Shinra refused to help him.

“Izaya,” Shinra sighed, finally sitting, so smug and horrible that Izaya wondered why he continued talking to the moron at all, “That’s completely normal. They’re _nocturnal emissions_. It’s part of puberty.”

And Izaya had stormed out before he could even finish asking, _“Is this more about who you’re dreaming of?”_

The dreams gradually faded away, and Izaya convinced himself to forget about them. They grew older, the monster grew only stronger.

And years later, when they faced off one final time, Izaya found himself thinking, only, _‘You’ve finally caught me.’_

It was nothing like his dreams, or anything he’d been secretly hoping for, even decades later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I forgot to post this one last night! It was my Shizaya Week entry, under the prompt "First Meetings". It sort of took on a life of its own, but it at least stayed... fairly close to the original idea.


	5. Life/Death

“Of course,” Izaya purrs, drawing his fingers along the hilt of the knife hidden deep within his jacket pocket, “I never intended to die.”

Robotic, routine—he’s grown bored of this game.

There’s a lot of crying, screaming, begging. There are blurry eyes quickly losing fire. There are fingers gripping weakly at the floor.

And when he calls Celty, she isn’t even surprised anymore.

_‘Is this it?’_ she asks, PDA shoved close enough to his nose that he almost takes a step back, _‘Are you finally sick of this?’_

Of course, he thinks. A game is only fun until the novelty fades away.

A day passes, and Izaya talks to no one. He ignores phone calls and emails. He stays inside and slaves over paperwork. Namie flashes him a pensive look on her way out the door. He doesn’t even complain about the dirty dishes left in the sink.

A dangerous game of life and death, but no one has ever actually died. So many suicides in Japan alone each year, and Izaya has never had the privilege of watching someone take their own life.

He’s walking to a sushi joint at the edge of Ikebukuro when he hears the howl of his own name. Mere centimeters from the heel of his shoes, a trashcan clatters against the sidewalk and rolls lop-sided into the street.

And they begin the chase.

Leaping over guard-rails, ducking between pedestrians, and scaling many brick walls, Izaya is breathless and giddy, lightheaded with the thrill of running away until a firm hand encircles his leg and yanks him down, _hard_.

They’re on the grimy pavement, tucked away in a random alleyway between two condemned buildings. He eyes the splintered wood obscuring the windows, the shadows moving along the walls as the sun sets slowly behind the concrete cage of the city. Shizuo wraps his hands around his neck, thumbs shoved against his throat. He croaks out a laugh.

“S-Shizu-chan,” he wheezes, lights dotting his vision, Shizuo’s face blurry as his lungs beg for oxygen, “What do you think… happens… after we die?”

The monster falters. He loosens his grip. There’s a battle waging behind those eyes—to kill him, or to set him free. To accept the chains of his inhuman reputation, or to prove to himself alone that he would never have the will to actually murder anyone.

“Who cares?” Shizuo spits, pulling back, “Why the fuck does it matter?”

He’s on his feet, crunching his fist against the bricks and shuddering with rage, with disappointment, with the fear of his own cowardice.

“We live, we die. None of this means anything. Stupid fucking louse. Why the Hell do you care what I think anyway?”

But Shizu-chan will live forever through word of mouth, through his legacy. He can’t understand the fear that humans hold for dying in obscurity. He can’t comprehend the agony of slipping away in quiet desperation—the need for a heaven, for an afterlife—

For anything better than this.

“No heaven?” Izaya questions, pulling himself up and wiping the blood from his lips, “No Hell even for monsters?”

Shizuo shoots him a fiery glare, trembling with the remnants of his anger.

“This is all there is,” he huffs, turning to walk away, “Stupid fucking louse, this here… this is all that matters, and you’re always fucking it up.”

Izaya’s laughter follows him into the street. He stays behind, tilting his head back and tracing the outlines of the stars through the smog in the sky.

What Shizu-chan meant, he thinks, is that with no afterlife, the choices you make, the way you’ll be remembered, those things will be your Heaven or your Hell. Dying a monster, remembered as a hero. Dying a human, remembered as a monster.

He decides that they walk entirely different paths.

Before he drags himself to his feet, Izaya pulls out his phone.

And he makes another request on the suicide forum.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I just... really wanted to write something about Izaya asking Shizuo what he thinks happens after death. Not sure why, but it was fun anyway!


	6. Ugly

Izaya runs cold fingers over jagged scars. His lips find the bullet wounds easily in the dark, warm and wet against Shizuo’s hip as ember eyes burn through the night, right into the hollow aching deep within Shizuo’s chest.

Each scar, he says, is a landmark displaying a monster’s rage. Red X’s pinpointing which places were once weak but now strong, the destination of near-fatal attacks and the raw repulsiveness of a human’s true fear.

“Of course Shizu-chan’s body is ugly,” he breathes, the beautiful lull of his voice masking the heartlessness of his words, “Would I want my monster any other way?”

Shizuo makes to pull away, nearly naked and far too exposed for his own comfort. Vulnerable, allowing the embodiment of everything he hates, everything he despises about himself, to rove hungry fingers over his tarnished skin. He doesn’t know why he let this happen. His body, so starved for attention, his heart, pounding relentlessly in his throat as every pore tenses, every hair standing erect as those words and those hands wash over him.

“So many scars,” Izaya clicks his tongue, a mirth in his eyes as though he’s speaking to a child, “How many of these were because of you? You must not like yourself too much, Shizu-chan.”

‘ _You’re one to talk’_ , he wants to retort, but his reply is jumbled somewhere in his chest, swimming in his head as he grips the edge of the bed to hold himself upright.

They fight, they fuck. They hurt each other, and they never quite seem to make up.

Izaya’s tongue is a knife in his chest. His eyes are hot like coals. He sees everything, and maybe he loves it—the sight of Shizuo’s old wounds, the evidence of his own self-destruction, of what man has done to him in an attempt to erase him completely.

“But you’re a tank, aren’t you?” He questions, and the words hang like smoke in the air. Shizuo itches for a cigarette, “Too hard to kill. You plow over everything in your path.”

His breath comes out in a strangled huff. His eyes tingle with an emotion that he refuses to address. Izaya is tracing a long scar running from calf to thigh, disappearing beneath his underwear. But it runs all the way to his hip, he knows.

“So what,” he replies eventually, not quite meeting Izaya’s eyes, “Who cares if it’s ugly? Who’s going to see it?”

Izaya will, but Izaya only. And his opinion doesn’t mean anything. They match, he thinks. Izaya’s inner ugliness is veiled behind a pretty face. Shizuo’s rotten core has simply seeped through to his skin, obvious only beneath so many careful layers of clothing that he refuses to shed for anyone who matters.

As though anyone would ever be willing to come so close.

“It’s so hard to look at,” Izaya soothes, placing gentle fingers against each faded wound as though he might heal them somehow, “No one could ever love a body like this.”

I know, he thinks. I know.

“But I,” Izaya continues, tone deep like muddied waters, eyes dancing with a sickness that causes bile to gather in Shizuo’s throat, “I’m touching you, don’t you see? You’re all mine. An ugly, damaged beast. No one else will want you.”

It’s a confession, he knows. The only way Izaya knows how.

He swallows the growing lump in his throat. He threads his fingers through Izaya’s hair.

They’re both broken things. Izaya’s mind is too warped for anyone to understand. His body is far too battered for any normal human being to ever find the strength to love.

“I’ll always be here,” Izaya purrs. There’s a fragile edge to his smirk. A fear, maybe, of being left behind. He’s seen the way that people seem to flock around Shizuo. He knows that things won’t be bad forever.

“Even if you leave me, no one will ever love you.”

_So please don’t leave._

_Please don’t leave me alone._

“I know,” Shizuo croaks. Even to him, even in the ears of a monster who will never experience real love, he knows that this isn’t healthy. He knows this is all wrong, “I know.”

And Izaya smiles—vulnerable for only a single bat of his eyelashes.

The words won’t leave him, so he says nothing.

But Izaya knows. He always knows.

He’s not going anywhere.

He hates himself too much to ever embrace anything but this hurt.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I keep saying, "Not all of these are going to be depressing!" But then... I'm slowly working my way through the novels, and Shizuo just makes me so sad. Izaya makes me so sad. Narita is determined to break my heart, and so the lightheartedness of my drabbles sort of pays the price!
> 
> I kind of like writing Izaya as this sort of... hurtful but insecure lover. Somehow, I feel like it suits him, but I'm probably wrong! Oh well.


	7. Unannounced

Shizuo is determined that he’s losing his mind.

“This plate,” he deadpans, turning to send Celty a look that can only be described as completely and utterly lost, “This isn’t mine.”

She’s sitting silently across the kitchen counter, twitching as though her fingers are dying to type away at the keys of her PDA, but she refrains. A simple cock of her helmet to the side, and Shizuo knows that she doesn’t believe him.

“I know!” he growls, tossing the stupid thing into the sink and ignoring the sound of it shattering against the other dirty dishes, “It’s in my house, but it’s not mine! It doesn’t match the others!”

This isn’t the only unusual replacement that’s taken place in his apartment. Three of the forks that he explicitly remembers bending in half are now shinier and newer than the rest. His showerhead no longer spews water out onto the floor. His mailbox downstairs in the lobby is free of its familiar dents. He’d felt lost collecting his mail yesterday. He’d overlooked his own apartment number three times in search of the cracked metal before realizing that it blended in with the others for the first time in years.

Celty raps her knuckles against the countertop. He drags his gaze toward her. She’s holding up her PDA, and he leans forward to read the text, scoffing only when he reaches the end.

_‘Do you need to talk to Shinra about this?’_

“I’m not crazy. This isn’t my shit.”

The week continues on like this. His shampoo bottle is full the day after he’d forgotten to pick one up from the store. There’s a single cup of Ramen left in the cabinet when he knows for a fact that he ran out the day before. Celty types shakily, thrusting her screen in his face after three days of his complaining, asking only,

_‘Could it be aliens?!’_

He doesn’t know why an alien would be interested in whether or not his hair is clean or his stomach is full. He doesn’t know where an alien would go to buy a new bottle of milk or a single piece of cake. He’s not sure if aliens even exist, and if they do, why wouldn’t they be abducting him instead of leaving tiny presents for him that he doesn’t really need? He’s been doing just fine with his broken things up until this point. He might not have a ton of money, but he definitely isn’t interested in extraterrestrial hand-outs.

Only when he’s heading home does he catch a whiff of that horrible flea-stench. There’s a stop sign groaning helplessly in his palm. There’s an insufferably chipper Izaya waving an empty shopping bag like a white flag and scurrying off into a fearful group of pedestrians.

When he makes it home, sitting on his counter, there’s a vase filled with an assortment of flowers and a single box of chocolates, tied up nicely with a big red bow.

And he decides, not exactly willing to throw the gifts away, but not wanting to _look_ at them either, that maybe he would have preferred aliens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This silly thing was only possible because of the always lovely LastHope (kixaxstyx), who messaged me on tumblr saying, "imagine izaya sneaky leaving shizuo gifts throughout their adult life, like new cups and plates when shizuo's broken his or fixing his mailbox when he accidentally tears it off and shizuo has no idea whos doing it until one day he accidentally catches izaya in the act and hes just so surprised and hes determined to find a way to pay back izaya for all the nice stuff he's done for him meanwhile izaya has no clue what shizuo’s trying to do and doesnt know that he knows"
> 
> It's such a cute idea! For the sake of brevity, I wasn't able to get to some parts, but if you were wondering how this particular scenario ends, it would be... that way.


	8. Helpless

Blood.

There’s so much blood.

There’s the black smokiness of shadows winding through the air, expired after only so much distance is put between himself and the city he grew up in—the city that he loved, that he protected, that he trusted with his entire soul.

The city which has betrayed him.

In the hands of a monster, of a hurricane of destruction and heartache, he isn’t sure how long it will stand before it crumbles like steel in that violent grip. Izaya’s eyes are wide, drinking in the world around him, tasting the bitter copper on his tongue and the darkness that envelops the passing buildings through foggy car windows.

Kine’s voice is a blur—in and out, in and out—his words are a jumble of syllables and meanings that Izaya’s brain struggles to understand.

Lost—

A lot—

How are you still—

Why would you—

He doesn’t comprehend it. He’s not sure if he wants to.

A figure shifts in the seat behind him. He can feel the vibrations of skin scraping the seats, the warmth of a human being so much closer than the arm’s length that he usually allows.

And he loves it, the human, the warmth, the feeling of being so near. His body cries out hungrily for touch. There’s a prickling beneath his lashes. There’s an aching in his chest. His cold fingertips fight to inch forward, to wipe the cooling sweat from his forehead. His wounds ooze. The numbness in his legs inches upwards toward his hips, his spine, and even his shoulders tingle.

Broken, completely. He can feel the chilly fingers of something ominous tugging him forward, toward a light, toward the endless abyss of death. Toward something that he’s entirely too terrified to contemplate. He grasps desperate, shaking fingers at the edges of his seat.

He won’t die here, not like this. Not in obscurity. Not so obviously alone.

The final tendrils of Celty’s shadows float through the open crack of the window. Kine says something about a doctor. The figure behind him sits straighter, jabbing a knee into the back of his seat.

“Serves you right. Now you can see how it feels to be helpless.”

Helpless, he thinks, and he laughs.

He’s never been anything but.

Reaching out, palms open and begging, heart thundering like the wings of so many dying insects; his skin crawling with the fear of hate, of love, of anything but the ugliness of mankind and the fists of an angry monster swinging clumsily just centimeters out of reach.

Helpless, always, to bridge the gap, to make those connections, to find something other than empty loneliness in a city brimming with so much life.

And Izaya leaves, bleeding slowly out, and wondering, in the most vulnerable, most secret parts of his mind, if losing to a monster makes him more human.

Or if maybe he’ll always find himself just a little too high above mankind to ever fill the vast, hollow reaches of his heart.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was a little rushed, but I've been listening to a lot of 'Until the Ribbon Breaks' lately, and I particularly wanted to write something while listening to 'Goldfish'. It has such an intense sound to it, and I think it fits Shizuo and Izaya really well. Sort of an overwhelming bitterness on Izaya's part. I guess this isn't exactly Shizaya, but oh well! The first one wasn't either. 
> 
> Anyway, more things to come! Thank you for reading these silly things!


	9. Marks

Shizuo remembers the feeling of bones breaking in his palms.

Like dried clay, maybe, if he had to describe it to someone who didn’t understand. A firm feeling, a warmth, the softness of pink human flesh, and a crumbling beneath his fingers under just a little bit of pressure. He could hear the crunch, the scream, the grinding of bone against bone and the muscles flopping weakly beneath the skin as though searching for the foundation that held them steady.

And he remembers the first time he’d ever bent steel—the groaning, the terrified eyes watching him like flashing headlights in the night, cutting right through his chest as though maybe he were a deer caught in their path.

He’d dropped his first stop sign before brandishing it, but that hadn’t stopped his ligaments from tearing from the mere force of trying.

And now, he finds himself cradling a body in the moonlight, kissing gentle trails along translucent skin. He’s fumbling dumbly in an attempt to keep every bone where it needs to be, unbroken, and muscles from ripping and bruises from bubbling up under all of that exposed whiteness.

“Shizu-chan,” a voice, liquid honey, red velvet maybe, or the smoothest chocolate milkshake he’d ever ordered from the ice cream shop during his lunch break, draws out slowly, twining nimble fingers through his hair, eyes so dark against pale skin that he imagines them drawn in with marker, “You’re not going to break me.”

He drags out a laugh even though nothing is funny.

Izaya is wrong, but he doesn’t say so. Neither of them would be willing to admit it even if he cracked like glass in Shizuo’s hands.

His kisses are a little too rough. His hands leave red marks as he grips as lightly as he can muster. Izaya makes little hums, little murmurs. He never complains. He says that he likes it rough.

But Shizuo is trying to be gentle. He’s trying to be kind.

And in the morning, when so many ugly marks line Izaya’s skin, he’ll say, “I like looking at them.”

But Shizuo will find himself wishing that Izaya would get dressed faster, if only so he won't have to see them anymore.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one was sort of... a warm-up? They're all a little depressing, I'm so sorry. But I've been without a computer for the last week, and I've been trying to work on a new request fic, so I thought, 'Why not write another drabble to get back in the mood to write?' 
> 
> And it ended up being.... this. I'm so sorry!
> 
> I hope you liked it anyway!


	10. Sake

Simon pats him on the back as he stumbles out into the night. Everything is a little fuzzy around the edges. His stomach churns uncomfortably, and for a mere moment, he thinks he might vomit.

“Shizuo, taxi?” Simon asks simply, words so loud and boisterous that he considers punching him right in the mouth, if only to shut him up, “Call your boss?”

Shaking his head, he pushes the big hand from his shoulder.

“M’fine,” he grumbles, tripping over a crack in the sidewalk and shrugging off Simon’s resulting concern, “My… my house… s’close.”

Simon lets him go, but he can hear him muttering something in Russian under his breath. It’s a warm night, breezy, quiet. The sidewalk is nearly barren, Hosts ushering in the last of the stragglers, couples slinking off toward love hotels, stray gang members hiding away in the shadows. No one spares him a look as he trudges along. He stops to breathe in the smells of the city: the remnants of food, the various perfumes, the car exhaust and the smoke of cigarettes.

His home, these scents, the entire city envelopes him in the most pleasant of feelings.

He’s dragging himself toward his apartment, sluggish and tired, contemplating the softness of the garbage bags strewn along empty alleyways when a specific smell catches his attention. It’s not entirely unfamiliar, not one that takes him more than a moment to recognize, but the idea of it wafting through his city so late in the night causes a fire to erupt in the depths of his belly.

_Izaya._

He can’t spot the bastard, and his mind is preoccupied only a moment later. Even the sidewalk seems appealing as sleep drags hot fingers over his eyelids, temping them closed, beckoning him toward anywhere safe enough and quiet enough for him to rest his head.

“Shizu-chan?” an insufferable voice stabs through the silence, high and cocky, so out of place in the serenity of the streetlamps buzzing above him and the muffled laughter and music through the windows of the bars.

“Shizu-chan, are you drunk?”

His voice is liquid-headache. He’s a blurry shadow against the backdrop of the darkened city streets. Under the streetlamp, obscured by the light pouring down behind him, Shizuo only recognizes him by the disgusting stink and the grating voice that tumbles from his lips.

“Fuck off.”

He makes to push his way through, dragging dumbed feet along the pavement and struggling to straighten his posture, if only to look a little less pathetic in the presence of the insufferable rat who is currently, oh-so smugly, blocking his path.

“Has Shizu-chan been drowning his sorrows in liquor?” Izaya draws out softly, not an ounce of kindness in his tone, “The sorrows of being a monster… If only my human mind could comprehend it.”

He swings clumsily, his fist dodged easily as Izaya seems to float backward, feet tapping lightly against the ground as he regains his balance. He click his tongue, waving a single finger in the air between them.

“Oh, Shizu-chan, always resorting to violence,” He hums, “Don’t you understand? No one will ever love you if keep pushing them away.”

“M’not pushing shit away. Just… just you. Fuck off.”

Izaya, however, does not fuck off.

He’s skipping in little circles around the sidewalk, winding around Shizuo as he makes slow work of walking home. He’s not particularly comfortable with being followed, but he has a feeling that Izaya knows where he lives anyway, and sleeping on the side of the road will be unpleasant in the morning.

As though pushing his boundaries, Izaya inches closer, ghosting fingers over his arm and smiling like no one in the world is watching, like it’s okay to be so happy about anything without fear of someone coming along and trying to ruin it.

Izaya draws in, stepping on his toes and forcing him to wobble to a stop.

“Shizu-chan,” he sighs, fingers against Shizuo’s cheek, lashes so long and dark that Shizuo can’t stop staring at them, “Your breath reeks of alcohol.”

He leans in. _His_ breath doesn’t stink of anything. It’s minty, caffeinated and hot, dusting along Shizuo’s cheeks and making his head swim with so many thoughts that he doesn’t have the strength to chase away.

“You won’t remember this in the morning, right?”

Without waiting for a reply, Izaya closes the remaining distance between them, pressing lips so much softer than Shizuo thought possible against his own and gripping his drunk-numbed face so hard with those thin fingers that Shizuo wonders if maybe it’ll bruise.

He’s gone before Shizuo can drag open his eyes.

And when he wakes up the next morning, he does remember, but he tells himself, desperately, that the alcohol must have given him bad dreams.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Two in one night! It's almost as though I went without writing for an entire four days... 
> 
> Anyway, this was a request from the always lovely shizayabayo. The prompt was "drunk Shizuo getting harassed", but somehow I ended up avoiding really filling that prompt and just writing Izaya kissing him instead. Oh well. I'm so sorry, Izaya. You always end up being the one pining. Shizuo is just a little too hard-headed.


	11. Pool

It doesn’t make any sense, but Shizuo tells himself that maybe that’s why Shinra came up with the idea in the first place.

A “free period”, a time without bickering or violence. Shinra seems to think that both of them are capable of such a thing, that maybe their hatred can be flipped off and on like a light switch. He doesn’t seem to fully grasp the idea of total abhorrence, of the absolute manner in which he despises Izaya with every fiber of his being, and no matter what happens—

Izaya is falling backwards into a pool, stabbing deep into the parting waters with a look of horror spreading across his features so completely foreign that Shizuo can’t help but stare.

A spa day, a resort with a giant pool. Izaya had scoffed at the mere idea of it and no one had understood why. He hadn’t even changed into a bathing suit when each of them—Shinra, Celty, himself, Izaya, and a few teenagers who Shizuo feels that he should probably recognize—filed outside with the crowd.

The blond kid—Koda or Kipa or something—took the first chance to shove the sneaky bastard into the water. Izaya hadn’t even expected it as he’d gone on and on about something surely sinister to a bespectacled girl who seemed to want nothing more than to melt into the searing concrete tiles lining the lip of the pool.

No one makes a move. No one takes a breath. There’s an aching heartbeat, there’s a lot of splashing. There’s Izaya struggling to keep his composure as he sinks slowly downward and bubbles which seem to echo as they pop through the open air as his head is buried deep beneath the surface. No one finds the strength to speak.

He can’t swim. The stupid shithead can’t swim.

Shizuo is in the water before he even comprehends why he cares at all. He’s heaving a limp Izaya over his shoulder, knee on the edge of the pool and palms burning on the ground as he lays the bastard down and rolls him to his back.

A day without fighting. Just one day. A single chance to prove to himself and everyone who he cares about that maybe he can be normal.

And Izaya is trying so hard to fuck that up.

He’s pinching Izaya’s nose, pressing their lips together, trying to remember if he should be pushing on his chest and deciding that no, that’s a bad idea even if it’s the right thing to do.

Everything is a blur. Izaya is choking. There’s a lot of murmuring behind them, a lot of eyes stabbing tiny holes in his back.

And when Izaya opens his eyes, for a split second, there is something buried deep within the shadows of his stare that is so much gentler than anything Shizuo has ever found there before.

“S-Shizu-chan,” he chokes, lips wet and glistening in the sunlight, cheeks kissed scarlet and lashes sticky with tears and pool water, “My… my mouth tastes like wet dog now.”

And Shinra was wrong, of course, because they could never go even a day without fighting.

Izaya returns home with a black eye. Shizuo brushes his teeth three times before his mouth starts feeling clean again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> LastHope (kixaxstyx on tumblr) is always really good at sending me these super cute ideas that are very hard not to write. I've been struggling with coming up with non-angst ideas lately, so I've been practically begging people to send me cute things. They delivered! The idea was: "Shizuo/Yourchoice where one of them doesn't know how to swim leading to maybe a daring rescue from the other with (gasp!) mouth to mouth resuscitation even if there's no need for it maybe?"
> 
> It was a lot of fun! It love snarky, rude Izaya.


	12. Everything a Reason

The crack of bones, the acidic bile inching slowly up a blood-drowned throat. The tremble of broken limbs lurching forward against the pavement, dark eyes twinkling like dying fireflies in the blackness of a city ripped open and raw. 

Izaya sees these things in his mind’s eye, considers the heart thumping desperately within his rib cage, and he wonders, in the deepest recesses of his mind, what might have happened if his tattered body might have met its end beneath a vending machine–soft drinks, of all things. He won’t touch them.

They’re so bad for one’s health.

But so is getting crushed to death, he muses. So is stumbling back against the nearest solid surface, ignoring the miserable whine of muscles grating over bone, of skin dragging in the dirt and gravel against the ground, and wounds crying a deep black against darkened clothing.

So is watching as the blurry silhouette of a monster draws only nearer–one step, then two–with a weapon so heavy brandished over its head that he might have thought that he was dreaming if this scene hadn’t played out before him many, many times before.

He remembers the tittering of his heart, the veins pulsating beneath hollow skin, the pounding of his brain so hard in his skull that he’d wondered if maybe it would crack open.

And he remembers accepting all of this, telling himself continuously– _’Death is better, death is fine. He’s a monster. Prove that he’s a monster. Show everyone what this monster is capable of doing–’_

“Orihara,” A voice tugs him from his memories, and he finds himself sitting comfortably in a chair by the window, listening to the soft pattering of the rain against the glass, “You look pale. Do you need me to take a look at you?”

 _‘You’re looking at me’,_ he wants to say, _‘You’re looking at me, and what do you see? Who do you find sitting in this silly chair right in front of you–an old friend, or someone who you can’t even recognize anymore?’_

Shinra doesn’t seem to hear him, despite how loudly his thoughts are screaming in his head. He shuffles in his seat, reaches a hand forward to rest against Izaya’s forehead. But before skin touches skin, before the ghost of touch can become more than a simple displacement of air, he’s batting that hand away.

Shinra smells of Ikebukuro–of cigarettes and sushi, of cologne and the exhaust of cars. He smells of the subway, of each of the bodies that surely huddled against him on the train. He smells of a world so far away that Izaya can only reach it in his dreams.

“I don’t need a perverted doctor rubbing his dirty hands all over me,” Izaya says finally, a jagged edge to his words that won’t ever seem to go away completely, “I’m fine.”

He’s not, they both know this. He’s trembling hard in his chair, scanning the tracks of water on the window, if only to fool himself into imagining that the wetness in his eyes is just a reflection.  
  
“I expected worse, honestly,” Shinra sighs, leaning back, always saying the wrong thing, even if he doesn’t mean to, “At least you’re alive.”

Izaya wants to laugh, but the jumbled mixture of noises which crackles through his throat is indecipherable. Maybe it’s a sob, maybe he’s yelling. Maybe he’s telling Shinra to get the Hell out and never come back, but no one speaks and no one moves, and he wonders if all of this is just in his head. If maybe Shinra isn’t here at all.

At least he’s alive, he thinks. At least the monster isn’t gripping white-knuckled to a lamp post, howling in agony at the memories of a life he’d taken months ago. At least Celty isn’t mourning the death of her best friend’s humanity. At least no blood was smeared on the pavement, tracing itself back to the three people who worked together tirelessly to put him in this chair. Who have resumed their lives unchanged, who can forget about any of this and carry on as though Izaya’s life isn’t what it is.

As though maybe Izaya never existed at all.

The strings of fate, he muses, stained red with his blood, have tied the three of them together. He’s gone, maybe forever. He’s banished himself to a city far away from all of the mess that he’d left behind, and regardless, Heiwajima Shizuo lives peacefully. Shinra and Celty might be getting married. The city lurches forward without him, settling itself into the old routines, absent of only one cog moving the constant machine of Ikebukuro, and it’s going on just fine.

He might as well be dead, he thinks. He might as well have never existed at all.

If Shinra isn’t an apparition, a figment of his imagination sent here only to torture him, he wonders what he’s doing here, or how he found him at all. He hasn’t spoken to any of them in months. He hasn’t found the strength to boot up a new computer, to log in to those old email addresses even once. Once, maybe, he might have considered it, might have hovered a cursor over the “log in” button, but his head had hammered within his skull, and his skin had shivered with the ache of old road rash, and he’d found himself shuddering in his chair across the room when Kine had finally made his nightly check-in.

Not strong enough, maybe. Not man enough to face the ghost of his old self, but he likes to think that maybe he’s just grown tired of that old skin. That maybe squeezing back into that life might not feel as familiar, as nostalgic as Shinra must think this surprise visit would have been.

“Why are you here?”

The voice speaking these words is not his own, but it isn’t Shinra’s either. It’s a small noise, a huff of breath and the rattling of emotion that sounds foreign in his ears. He doesn’t recognize this person. They’re just as unfamiliar to him as the face that he finds looking back at him in the mirror each morning–small and insignificant, wounded and subdued. He doesn’t like this person and he doesn’t like this voice.

And he doesn’t like the way that Shinra replies, as though nothing has changed at all.

“Well, things have been quiet lately. Not boring, but quiet. So I thought you might have been plotting something.”

It’s a lie, but he doesn’t have the strength to call Shinra out on it. Anymore, he finds that he doesn’t have the strength to do much of anything.

“As though I would waste any time in that city,” he breathes, but the sarcasm is only in the words. His voice is just as small and pathetic as it had been before.

“I do have an appointment today, Shinra. I can’t sit around here listening to you ramble on all day.”

That’s also a lie. He hasn’t started working again. The small fortune tucked away in his bank account will be enough to cover his temporary leave for maybe a few more years. In a smaller apartment, in a dingier part of town, it might last him for the rest of his life.

Regardless, Shinra rises from his chair. He dusts the nonexistent dirt from his clothing, sends Izaya a smile that wracks ice along his spine. And he nods, extending a hand between them.

“Until next time then, Orihara.”

Izaya doesn’t take it. He doesn’t allow his gaze to slip from the window. He watches Shinra’s reflection bite back a laugh. He watches as he turns toward the door.

The click is a gunshot in the silence. A shiver works its way from the crown of his head all the way down to his unfeeling toes. He can’t find the will to roll himself into his room and fetch his painkillers, even as the tell-tale ache begins to blossom at the tips of his fingers, itching along his arms and numbing his shoulders.

He thinks of a monster lifting a vending machine from the ground. He thinks of a fairy mending his wound with inky shadows, fading only as the city shrunk into tiny dots against the horizon. He thinks of Shinra smiling, telling him that he’s better off alive.

And finally, he laughs.

This life, he thinks, the current state of things; living alone with his bitterness and his self-hatred, leaving behind the life of a proud man, a man who could stand on his own two feet, a man who could face off against a monster if only to save the world–

He laughs, and he laughs, and he tells himself only as the rain lightens up and the sun peeks through the gray corners of the clouds:

No, death would have been better.

At least death would have meant more than this.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one isn't technically Shizaya, but I guess the first one wasn't either. There isn't a lot to say about it! It's just a bummer, all around. I'm so sorry.


	13. Kink

Shizuo drags his eyes across the room, over the television blaring in front of him to the angular decor positioned in just the right places around the apartment. He glances briefly at Shinjuku bustling through the wide, open windows, and finally settles his gaze on Izaya sitting quietly at his work desk. **  
**

He’s focused entirely on the computer screen in front of him, squinting through his glasses as his fingers dance across the keys.

The man on the television says cheerfully, _“In which human organ would one find the alveoli?”_ and without missing a beat, and maybe without even realizing that he’s speaking, Izaya answers to no one in particular, “The lungs.”

Two dings as a contestant hits their buzzer and answers cautiously, _“What are… the lungs?”_ and Shizuo doesn’t focus on the screen as they’re awarded whichever amount of money they might have made from such a question. He doesn’t watch enough television to really understand the rules of this game show anyway.

Instead, he watches as the early afternoon light plays off of Izaya’s porcelain skin, casting long lines through dark hair and exposing all of the different hues of all of the different strands. Shizuo thinks that he might spot a few grays in there too, but he doesn’t mention it. He observes, silently, as the host asks another question.

_“Which galaxy is the closest to the Milky Way?”_

And again, within a moment, Izaya’s muffled reply of, “Andromeda” beats each of the contestants by at least thirty seconds.

He stands from his seated position as Izaya replies to a question that he didn’t even think to focus on.

 _“Coulrophobia”_ –he has no idea what that even is, but the woman on TV answers incorrectly. Two more contestants strike out before the last saves the day, but Shizuo can only focus on Izaya’s mouth nibbling at the end of his pen as he types and retypes a few lines of whatever sneaky shit he’s working on.

Izaya doesn’t flinch when he comes stand behind him, or even when his mouth finds an exposed patch of that milky neck and his teeth immediately dig in. Not hard enough to bleed, not even hard enough to bruise. He can feel Izaya’s voice vibrating against his lips as his tongue darts out to drag around the indentations that his teeth have left.

“Deoxyribonucleic–Shizu-chan, I’m trying to work here. Do you mind?”

Shizuo pauses for only a moment, and only to tug the collar of Izaya’s shirt further down to expose more skin. He kisses a small trail down a jutting collarbone, craning his neck awkwardly in order to reach it and pointedly ignoring Izaya’s laughter at the way that he struggles.

“Keep working then,” he huffs, standing straight and dragging Izaya’s chair back just far enough that he can squeeze between him and the desk, “And keep answering the questions.”

Izaya looks as though he might speak, but Shizuo drops to his knees before he can, scooting under the desk just enough that Izaya is able to push his chair back underneath.

He presses Izaya’s thighs apart, fingers trailing to the bulge that can’t quite figure out if it needs to tent the front of Izaya’s pants or not.

He leans forward to plant a kiss against the fly, and that seems to get the job done anyway. Izaya twitches, letting out a low hiss as his fingers struggle to tap against the keyboard.

 _“Gymnophobia is the fear of what?”_ the host asks, and Izaya chokes out a laugh.

Shizuo pulls down the zipper, taking things slow as he pushes open the button and tugs out Izaya’s eager erection. He flicks his gaze upward, noting the color against Izaya’s cheeks, the way he bites his lips before choking out, “Nudity.”

Shizuo laughs as well, a quick chuckle that sends more pinkness pooling Izaya’s face. Hot breath against Izaya’s clothed erection, fingers pushing the fabric down to expose the head, he listens closely as one of the contestants finally get the answer right.

_“What is the hottest planet in our solar system?”_

Shizuo might argue that Izaya is looking a little too hot right now, as his tongue drags over the head of his cock. Izaya shudders, furrowing his brows and allowing his eyes to slip closed. His toes curl in his socks beneath the desk–feet pressed tightly against Shizuo’s shoulders as though trying to force him to move a little faster.

He swallows it whole, dragging his tongue down the underside of Izaya’s cock as he goes. Eyes trained on Izaya’s face, he holds back a laugh as the word “Venus” is forced breathlessly out into the air between them.

Another correct answer. Shizuo rewards him by slowly bobbing his head, never breaking his stare despite the fact that Izaya has tipped his head back and pulled his fingers from the keys. They comb through blond hair, tugging each time that Shizuo’s tongue finds the spot just under the head–the one that he knows sends vibrations of pleasure dancing over Izaya’s skin.

_“How many people have walked on the moon?”_

Shizuo takes this opportunity to pull back, planting his lips firmly against Izaya’s sensitive spot. He drags his tongue over it first before sucking gently, and shivers wrack through Izaya so hard that his chair scoots backward.

Holding him in place, Shizuo continues, so focused on the way that he’s writhing that he almost misses his meek whisper of, “T-twelve”.

_“Aspirin comes from the bark of what tree”?_

Izaya is letting out the most pleasurable of little noises, pulling so hard at Shizuo’s hair that he can feel a few strands tugging free from his scalp. He’s rocking his hips forward and back, moaning weakly as Shizuo forces him to sit still. A long swipe of his tongue over Izaya’s sweet spot, a strangled groan of, “W-white–ah–w-white–w-willow–”

And he’s cumming hard against Shizuo’s face, cursing and shaking as his fingers dig into Shizuo’s hair.

Shizuo stands a moment later, wiping the mess from his face and sparing a look down at Izaya. He’s splayed out across his chair, chest heaving, eyes heavy, brow dotted with sweat.

Chancing a glance at the computer screen, Shizuo can’t help but chuckle at the jumble of letters near the bottom of the page, the “g” drawn out entirely too long and the typos highlighted red against the white background.

He takes a step away, and he can hear Izaya swiveling around in his chair. A quiet snarl about stupid, handsy monsters.

The credits begin to roll on the television. The sun moves slowly behind the wall of buildings off in the distance of the city.

A new show begins to play on TV, and he notices, with a smug smirk, that Izaya stays quiet during this one.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This was an anonymous request from tumblr! I've been getting a few more of those than usual lately, but I think this one... stood out to me for a lot of reasons, haha! 
> 
> The request was: "ok so this might be weird. I've seen a lot of Shizaya strength kink where Izaya is super turned on by Shizuo's strength which I love but how about something a little turned around, a Shizaya drabble where Shizuo is really turned on by intelligence. And not that Shizuo is dumb, but Izaya is Really Fucking Smart. And when he demonstrates that without being pretentious about it it's a huge turn on. Also, Izaya in reading glasses is just infinity fuckable. Really Shizu-chan he's tryin to work here."
> 
> So thanks again to the person who requested it!


End file.
